How Steemit changed my personality into a greedy, jealous ogre.

in #personal8 years ago (edited)

Today i want to write a bit about what steemit did with me. With my personality.  

Please read it to the end, or dont read it at all.

I apologize for not being word-perfect in eglish, i am always trying to improve my english skills.


I joined Steemit not that long ago. I wrote in my introduction post that i found out about Steemit through the Polononiex Trollbox, but i remembered that that is not true. The first time i heard about Steemit was this Video from @trevonjb:


A new social media platform where you can make money with posting and voting stuff up. Much money! To be honest, i couldnt believe it. I thought that it would be a scam or something else people would try to rip me off with. THEN i heard about the extreme Steem price increase in the poloniex trollbox... and decided to give Steemit a burl.

I published a few political articles i wrote a few years ago and earned... nothing. I checked the trending posts out and was shocked how well all these superficial posts were doing. I was so annoyed by it that i wrote a post with the title "Steemit shows the ugly face of our society".


I shut my computer down, started it 2 hours later again and... couldnt believe it. My post made more than $200!!!


It was like a gift from god. You have to know that i am not making much money with my job. My wife Roberta and I are having fiscal difficulties at the moment, Steemit seemed to be the solution for all the problems we are having. 

I immediately called Roberta and told her about it. "I made 200$ with an online post!" - "What?!!". She couldnt believe it too.

If you get so much money for a post, that i dont even think was good, you want to repeat it. I did not want that to be a lucky shot. The next day i wrote a post about "how steemit could revolutionize the music industry towards a fairer and more profitable business modell". 


I put a lot work in this. In comparison to the post before, i really made an effort that cost me 10 times the time. So i expected that it would be more succesful. But i earned "only" $200 again with it. Okay, but $200 dollars are still a lot of money for a post. "The next time i make much more, because my Steem Power will increase" i thought. In every forum you could read that you make exponential more money with every post over time.

So i published more and more, but made less and less. There was this post i made $50 with, but that was it. 

Let's take a look on my last four posts i published after my experience you are reading here:

That is nearly what i earned with the other posts i published before these four.


"Why?"- I thought that i would make at least $100 dollars with my posts, but i did not. 

I started thinking about what i am doing wrong. I did read all the posts where people explain what you have to do to write trending articles, what the whales want to see.

"Creativity! Be creative!" i thought. "Creativity is the masterkey!" - so i tried to be as creative as i could. 

It sounds crazy (well maybe not), but it is hard to be creative when you sit in front of a screen. Just saying "be creative" doesnt let you be creative. So i drove into the city, 15 miles away from the rural area i live in. I drove through the city, desperately searching for inspiration. I ended up, sitting at the main railway station. 

"Thousands of people pass here, i will definitely find something i can write a great blog post about", i thought. My brain kept saying "Be creative! Find something!". After 45 minutes i left. Did i have an idea? No.  


Back at home my wife was waiting for me. 

"How was your day?", she asked. 

"Good", i responded. 

"I cooked rice with vegetables."

"Okay."

I immediately turned my computer on. "Fuck, why is it so hard to be creative?!" - The next three hours i spent with surfing on facebook, searching for new ideas. I thought about another thing the posts, teaching how to be successful on Steemit, said: "You have to be the first one! You have to bring something new to Steemit. Whales vote NEW stuff up, like they did with this superficial post showing marijuana". So i felt like i was in a competition with all the other Steemians. "Hurry up! The chance that you write something the whales have not seen before decreases with every minute! And dont vote good content from beginners up, if you dont make money, at least they should not make money either!". 

Two hours later i fell asleep. I did not find anything. 

I woke up overtired and with a horrible backache. I asked myself what the fuck i am doing here. Finally i realized what that whole situation did with me.

We all would love to make a bit money with Steemit. We all want to write THE trending post. But, folks, dont destroy yourself. Dont loose yourself in this platform. Dont let envy take over your soul.
Use this platform to express yourself, to share things with others, to have fun. Fight against the greed that tries to change your life, your behavior, your personality.

Peace.


Update: I removed the old post because i want the main category to be "personal", not "steemit".

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Perfect sentiment. Steem is not a get rich quick platform and if you treat it like that, 1) you won't get rich quick or otherwise and 2) you'll make the site worse. Focus on expression, focus on thinking about what adds value to others, what your audience wants to hear. Otherwise you'll go crazy and be wasting your time.

Great to have you around, thanks for your thoughtful post.

Thank you very much :)

yes, it is annoying as fuck. Cheetah should fight against spam but at the moment he is a spamming bot

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